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SPAM AND BEETROOT FOR SUNDAY TEA

I was 7 years old in September 1939, so have vivid memories of the war as a young girl. We were a farming family, living at Netherton near Elmley Castle. We had 749 acres, which meant we were large enough to have decoy lights placed on our land, which came on during air raids, so the place resembled Birmingham Aerodrome.

My Father was in the local ARP. In 1942 I was sent to Ellerslie Boarding School in Malvern, where it was considered to be relatively safe, not knowing the Radar Establishment was a target!

The headmistress impressed my parents by providing all food available on rations. There was always enough to eat. I recall 4 slices of bread and butter, and a slice of cake or bun for tea. As I was tall and thin I liked to sit next to a girl on a diet, so I could have her extra slice. Sunday evenings we had spam and beetroot for tea — not my favourite food. We only had birthday cakes if there were sent from home. We were fortunate to have central heating in the school.

School holidays were spent with my brothers and sisters, eight of us in total. We would cycle to places such as Tewkesbury or Stratford, and generally help around the farm. We had ponies which we rode.

I recall going to Evesham with Mother to buy heavy rolls of blackout material for the windows.

My dresses were mostly made out of my sister’s skirts, and my first new dress was a Shirley Temple flowery muslin affair, which I had in 1944 aged 12 years. I was pretty proud of it.

Like most farms we had a house cow which kept us supplied in milk and cream. We poured the cream off the milk and gave the skimmed milk to the workmen for free. We used cream to make butter and cheese.

We also killed a pig every year and a gentleman called Mr Bert Broome would carve and joint it and also salt it.

In our barns we had Italian Prisoners Of War living, and we children were fascinated to watch them hang the spaghetti they made to dry on railings. One poor P.O.W got left with a broken heart when a girl in the village with whom he had been seeing, decided to end their relationship. This proved too much for the poor man and he ran across the fields with a pair of scissors intending to end his life, but my Father was able to calm the situation, and it all turned out peacefully.

At the end of each year’s harvest, we held a harvest festival in the barns for the workmen and I played the piano and we all sang songs like ‘Roll out the Barrel’, ‘Clementine’ etc. and generally a good time was had by all. All the food was grown on the farm for the fare.

We bottled fruit and preserved eggs and ate pigeon, rabbit and jugged hare. We wore silk stockings, and we would take them into the local drapers for repair when a ladder or hole appeared. They were hard to come by, and were not discarded as we now do when laddered.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by June Woodhouse of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Ruth Bennett and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

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